During the early 1970s everyone had this belief that freedom would come the following year. It’s now been accepted by the IRA, particularly by ordinary volunteers, that this is going to be a long, long war. We’re not prepared to set a time on it. At the same time we’re not prepared to take an all-out offensive in such a way that it would jeopardize our chances of chipping away at the British Army and therefore the British government.
But admitting to its supporters that the struggle was going to be a long one meant that the IRA needed to step up its political work. Republicanism would have to be carried forward not just by arms, but by agitation and participation in elections. The activists of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the republican movement, found a new campaigning issue in the conditions in which republican prisoners had been held.
By early 1976 the government was introducing ‘criminalization’, abandoning the special category status for those convicted of terrorist offences which had allowed them rights not enjoyed by prisoners anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Under the new rules loyalist and republican terrorists would be treated as ordinary felons. The drill parades and other paramilitary trappings which had been permitted in internment camps were no longer allowed. From May 1976 this was to become a major issue in the nationalist community as the first inmate in the newly built H-Blocks at the Maze prison refused to wear regulation clothing.
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The shift of power in the IRA from South to North created uncertainty in Army intelligence. It was evident that the northerners were becoming more powerful, but intelligence chiefs were confused about the extent of the shift and about the role of Southern Command. In 1978 James Glover, the Brigadier General Staff (Intelligence) who was trying to consolidate information-gathering activities, wrote another report, Northern Ireland: Future Terrorist Trends. A copy of the secret document was subsequently obtained by the IRA, much to the embarrassment of Whitehall. In it Glover confessed:
‘We know little of the detailed working of the hierarchy in Dublin. In particular we have scant knowledge of how the logistic system works, nor do we know the extent to which the older, apparently retired, republican leaders influence the movement.’
The use of military terminology by the IRA infuriates many in the British Army and the loyalist community, and the association of the IRA’s bombing and assassination activities in the 1970s with its struggle decades before is also offensive to many in the Republic. However, sympathy for the Catholics of the North in their struggle against social disadvantage runs deep within mainstream politics in Ireland. Many politicians who were critical of the Provisionals’ methods were therefore reluctant to take concrete action against them. The issue of cross-border security – or rather why the Irish government was not doing more to improve it – remained a major irritant with the chiefs at Lisburn and Knock. Despite this, there was a gradual shift in attitude in Dublin. Slowly Irish governments were beginning to recognize that the IRA represented a threat within their own state. The advent of Police Primacy in 1976 was a positive step for Dublin, since it removed the Army, with whom the Gardai would not deal, from control of operations.
Apart from the ignorance of the security forces about the command structure of the IRA, the generally lacklustre performance of the intelligence community had been reflected in the dramatic drop in seizures of weapons during the period 1974 to 1978. But by early 1977 a combination of factors was leading to a greatly improved performance. The Army had been systematically expanding its undercover surveillance since the beginning of 1976 – the same year that the RUC had also set up special surveillance units.
Besides these exceptional measures Kenneth Newman, first as senior deputy chief constable and later as chief constable, had attempted to improve the basic standard of police work. He had, for example, organized the shipment of more than 20,000 fingerprints to England for analysis. As a result there had been several hundred arrests. Newman tried to instil better practices in the force, with greater effort made to protect forensic and other evidence which might offer the only chance of gaining convictions.
The RUC’s CID officers took over interrogation of suspects, mainly at Castlereagh, from the Army. The reorganization of police work meant that interrogators were more often able to confront suspects with a full dossier on their associations and activities. This panicked many into confessions. At the same time changes in the law allowed people suspected of terrorist crimes to be held for three or seven days, allowing interrogators to work for longer on hard cases. However, subsequent investigations were to show that the CID’s improved results – there was a steep rise in confessions during 1974 to 1976 – was in some cases being achieved by recourse to beatings. The Commanding Officer of an infantry battalion returning from a tour in Belfast’s Andersonstown told his superiors in a classified report: ‘The CID are not emasculated by the same restrictions on the methods of questioning terrorist suspects as those imposed on the [Special] Branch at Castlereagh, all of which work to the advantage of the terrorist. The results CID have achieved during our tour have been impressive.’
Newman also set up a Regional Crime and Intelligence Unit at each of the RUC’s three regional headquarters. The units were jointly staffed by CID and Special Branch officers so that the activities of the two departments became
